


Punished

by talefeathers



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-08 03:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/756384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre is rewarded for his efforts to protect his friends at the barricade by being the only one to survive the rebellion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Punished

The next thing Combeferre was aware of was dull pain. He was sore all over, but it was worse in his shoulder and in his knee than anywhere else. His throat scratched out a groggy groan. He dragged a hand down his face, smearing something warm and sticky and red along his cheek. It was the red that woke him up.

His stomach gave a sickening lurch. They’d been the only barricade left. They’d been abandoned, outnumbered, staring down a firing squad, ready to die.

He forced his eyes to open, forced himself to turn his head. He was in the cafe, that much he could see through the blur. All the sound had been sucked out of it, and much of the color. Tears sprang to his eyes as if they knew what he was about to see. He blinked them away.

Grantaire was in a bloody heap beneath the out-facing window, his inky curls stuck to his face and to the floor. He’d awakened, then, in spite of Combeferre’s prayers that he alone might still live, that for once his drinking might do him a good turn. He’d awakened to die by the one man that had ever been able to put a light in his wretched eyes.

In the window hung their chief, their fearless leader, their Enjolras, unfurled like the flag he still held in his limp hand. It was a death he would be proud of, and Combeferre tried to be proud, too. What he thought of instead was how young he’d been. He could have had so much more time. He could have been so much more than a martyr.

A shard of grief lanced his heart and he turned away from these two, only to find Joly’s glassy brown eyes inches away from his own. He scrambled away with a hoarse yelp, splinters digging into his hands as he clawed for purchase, dragged himself away from the body that should be warm, should be laughing, should be anything but lying empty in a pool of its own blood. He felt like his heart was being wrung out, squeezed dry of every happiness it had once held. He thought he might vomit.

One of his hands brushed an icy wrist. He turned to find the owner before he could stop himself. Courfeyrac. Constant, jovial, bighearted Courfeyrac. The glue that had held them all together, gone. It was too much.

He was the only one left. He’d pulled them to safety, he’d called them back from danger, he’d thrown himself in harm’s way to shield them, only for this. Only to fail. To fail and be punished.

He let go the sobs that had risen in his chest, let his whole body shake with them while he pulled Courfeyrac’s corpse into his lap, clutching him as he had only hours before. Then, he’d held him to give comfort; now he held him in a futile attempt to take it.


End file.
